For the Supreme Commanders wanting to see what happens after the Infinite War...

Total Annihilation players may think that this new Cybran unit resembles the slow but heavily armoured "The Can" from TA, and they would probably be right. With the difference that this killing machine is amphibious and has a long range cannon!

Whilst the single player campaign wasn't exactly the main appeal of Supreme Commander, there certainly are quite a few changes in the expansion pack missions. Instead of giving each faction a separate storyline to follow, the player gets to choose his or her allegiance during the first mission, and this affects which Armoured Command Unit the player receives at the start of the rest of the missions. Besides this, there are some other minor differences (such as the chatter, changing depending on the race chosen), but there is basically just a single set of 6 missions. This may not seem like a lot, but the typical Supreme Commander mission structure (upon finishing a task, the area expands and the player is confronted with a new threat – something that happens several times during each mission) and decent replayability value due to being able to use the other factions (no more excuses such as "I would have managed if I had Soul Rippers") mean that there is easily over 30 hours of fun to be had from the single player campaign alone.

Unfortunately, this campaign, and more importantly Forged Alliance in general, seems to be somewhat torn between trying to cater to the Supreme Commander fans and new players. The fact that it's a standalone expansion would suggest that it is geared towards new players and veterans alike, but looking at the game itself, this is very difficult to accept. The campaign is incredibly unforgiving towards newcomers who aren't accustomed to the gameplay mechanics. Instead of gradually allowing them to get accustomed to the rather impressive line-up of usable units, new players are overwhelmed with being allowed to (in fact, forced to, in order to survive) build every unit in the tech tree, bar some of the new additions on the first map, experimental units included. Also, the restriction of only being able to use the new faction in multiplayer battles for those not owning the original game is quite a huge handicap.

You are not alone: in the single player campaign you are often supported by an AI controlled team-mate, often protecting you earlier on in the mission.

The Seraphim, with their metalic/organic alien looks, have some of the most impressive looking units in the game.

On the other hand, for those that have had their fair share of Supreme Commander earlier on this year, the missions may seem somewhat easy and extremely predictable. Players, for example, that know how the mission area expansion system works can easily prepare for the not-so-surprising counter-attack of the AI from bases that were off the map until a certain objective was met. This means that not completing the objectives at first, but building an extremely powerful army before allowing the counter-attack to happen can make the game a snore-fest, and the horribly scripted AI doesn't help there either.

However, besides the somewhat lacklustre single player campaign, the game offers a lot to Supreme Commander fans, with the most notable difference being the completely revamped economy and game balance. Basically every single unit has undergone some tweaking, which sadly means that all those old tactics and build orders have become obsolete, but the game has definitely changed for the better. "Turtling", as a strategy, has been completely destroyed by making mass fabrication horribly inefficient, and beefing up the mass extraction. Whilst the best way to get mass in SC was to chain fabricators and generators in large numbers, players have to expand and capture mass spots now, abolishing the six hour stalemates of the original game. This can mean that the game is decided very early on (during the tech 1 stage), if one side doesn't manage to get and hold a fair chunk of the map, so the game is arguably even less beginner tolerant than it was before the expansion pack.